"There are three things you should know about me. I'm in a coma. My husband doesn't love me anymore. Sometimes I lie," says Amber, the quintessentially unreliable leading lady of Alice Feeney's debut psychological thriller, Sometimes I Lie. Reliably performed by Stephanie Racine, it falls into that new subgenre of books in which nothing is quite as it seems. The fiendishly clever plotting of Feeney's novel will have readers trying desperately to puzzle out the shifting shapes of its main characters. Someone in Amber's life—her husband, her sister (if she really has a sister), a bitter ex-boyfriend—is trying to kill her. While Amber lies in her hospital bed after a car accident, awake but seemingly comatose and unable to move or speak, the tightly braided strands of her story begin to unravel as the narrative reaches back to the days preceding the accident and into the decades-old entries in an unhappy child's diary. As the mind-bending twists get increasingly more perplexing, listeners will be left holding their breath.

UPPER-CRUST EXPOSÉ
Mrs., Caitlin Macy's second novel, narrated by Vanessa Johansson with the right tone of privileged anguish, is set in Manhattan's rarefied Upper East Side, where your kid's preschool is a major status symbol. In Mrs., the primo preschool is St. Timothy's, and many of the preschoolers' mothers are totally taken with Philippa Lye, the slender, gorgeous wife of the scion of the last privately owned investment bank in New York. But this former model with a mottled background keeps her distance. Macy has cleverly twined many points of view to flesh Philippa and her story out. Gwen, a smart and sensible nonupper- crust mother married to a struggling district attorney, is our best informant, but Philippa's perceptive 7-year-old daughter and Minnie, an unabashed social climber and wife of a smarmy hedge-fund honcho, add much to the layered portrait of Philippa and the often morally maimed world of the 1 percent. Mrs. is social commentary wrapped in a fun read.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, in an America that seems to be slipping away from its dream and in which so many groups feel threatened, it's crucial to understand our country's complex political dynamics. Amy Chua, an expert in ethnic conflict and a professor at Yale Law School, is drawn to difficult, provocative questions (she's also the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother). In her latest, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, engagingly read by Julia Whelan, Chua contends that America is a "super-group," a rare polity that's never been an "ethnic nation" but is more the racial, ethnic and cultural melting pot we have always championed. She details how our strong belief in the power of American democracy has led to huge foreign policy blunders. But central to Chua's concerns is the need to come to grips with our evermore divisive and hostile political tribes, destructive identity politics and the corrosion of our super-group principles. In order to heal, we must talk to each other again and engage in a common enterprise for the common good.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Amber has just become aware that she is in a hospital, in a coma. While she can hear what is going on around her, she can't move, even to open her eyes. She hears that she was in a car accident and went through a window. She hears that the police think her husband had something to do with it. She hears the doctor threatening her, putting something in her IV. When Amber flashes back to a few weeks before and the time leading up to the accident, she starts to piece together why she is there. Amber also flashes back to childhood, to a sometimes sinister ten-year-old's diary, which never mentions her younger sister Claire. In pieces and fragments, the story slowly comes together, only to change as soon as readers think they have a handle on what is true and what isn't. Stephanie Racine reads with the right amount of fear, urgency, and sly treachery. Her performance helps to confuse readers as the story becomes more and more convoluted, with each surprise bigger than the next. VERDICT A fun thriller with a terrifically twisted ending that fans of Gone Girl and Girl on a Train will love.—Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix P.L.